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Thursday, 07 June 2012

The Echo Box

In a rather annoying trend, discrepancy seems sometimes to be widening into direct contradiction in the news. In our recent gubernatorial recall election, one side was trumpeting that Wisconsin had added 30,000 jobs, and the other side was advertising that Wisconsin had lost 30,000 jobs. Which was it? The "traditional" media, which is growing increasingly scarce here and increasingly biased, were not much help.

So here's the news: either Panasonic will be investing 30 to 50 billion yen in Olympus, or it won't be!

Isn't that exciting?

Of course, I don't know. I haven't done any original reporting, personally. I'm just a guy sitting in a little house in Wisconsin. I don't speak Japanese, and I don't have the phone numbers of the CEOs of Olympus or Panasonic in my "Rolodex" (I assume "Rolodex" is now a vestigial term, like "dialing" a phone). As we usually do with such industry news, I reported a report, namely, I parrotted what the Japan Times said. Imaging-Resource repeated a different report, from the subscription-only Kyodo News Agency. Well, I think it's a different report, unless the the Japan Times got the report from Kyodo News Agency too, which might be what the word "Kyodo" in small type under the title of the article indicates. So who's echoing whom? Who got the news, and from where, and who (else) is just repeating something they heard?

Olympus immediately issued a very vaguely-worded denial, which might or might not be referring to the reports about Panasonic. But then, they're doing that a lot these days. If someone issued a report that clear skies above Tokyo appear blue, Olympus would issue a statement that said "Certain sections of the media have reported today that the skies over Olympus Corporation (the 'Company') are blue. This is not announced by the Company. The Company will immediately disclose any further important information when it comes to light."*

"I don't know where that information came from, not from us," [Panasonic President Fumio] Ohtsubo said on the sidelines of a meeting of the Japan Electrical Manufacturers' Association. "There isn't any," he said when asked if Panasonic had a plan to invest in Olympus.

So there you have it. Might be news, might not be; might be true, might not be; might be announced later this week, when Olympus issues an expected report; might prove to have been a rumor. The world continues to need more reporters and fewer echo boxes, and I'm not chuffed that I'm part of the problem. At least when I want to know what color the clear sky is, I can look out the window and give my own report. (Blue.)

Mike

*Note that that last sentence actually means, "The Company will not disclose any further important information when it comes to light." I'm just sayin'.

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Featured Comment by Francis Harrison: "I'm in Tokyo and yes, the story is accepted as fact here. Remember also that Fuji was at one point considering buying either Leica or Olympus. (Outright...?) Heady times. The takeaway for me: in spite of some horrendous corporate behavior going back at least two decades, Olympus technology and products, whether they be consumer cameras or endoscopes, are highly regarded, making Olympus a very valuable entity regardless...."

It's true of politicians, and corporate execs, who generally have an ax to grind and/or a position to defend: The Irish saying (based I believe on a Biblical line) "The truth is not in them". In both cases, getting or keeping money and power is a top priority.

"...one side was trumpeting that Wisconsin had added 30,000 jobs, and the other side was advertising that Wisconsin had lost 30,000 jobs. Which was it?"

This is an example of the type of conundrum that prompted me to "turning-off" so much of the world's "news" and noise 10+ years ago. In the final distillation it just doesn't really matter a whit what "I" know, or think I know, about most current subjects. Politics (especially), economists (for the most part), entertainment celebrity news, most sports, nearly all pop culture subjects (especially television shows)...all go directly to my "ignore" bin.

This leaves me much more time to tune-in more closely to subjects that either I affect or that directly affect me. I don't propose wide adoption of my strategy but I can report that it's been a much more satisfying and rewarding strategy for the final 25-30% of my time on the planet!

As a former serious newspaper guy, I have to say that the media is now more screwed up than anytime since World War II, and maybe before that (although there were always abuses.) In the last two decades, it has become more and more partisan, and less and less professional or fact-based. So where did the Panasonic-Olympus report come from? Apparently, it's impossible to tell. Maybe it started as a rumor on a photo forum, and got picked up by some 19-year-old "reporter" for a newspaper.

In the US, local newspapers are disaster zones because of Craig's list and other such internet media. The internet devastated advertising revenues, and all over the country, thousands of professional journalists have been laid off, not to be replaced; those that are replaced are replaced by the rawest recruits, because they are the cheapest, and they are thrown directly into the deep end of the pool. So, when you read your local political news, it may very well be coming from a 23-year-old journalism grad who took one poly-sci course in college.

The national papers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal (who are also suffering severe economic problems) have another problem: they have fallen in thrall to various political theories and to partisan politics, to the point where the Post and the two Times have become more or less spokesman for the Democrats, while the WSJ performs the same function for the Republicans. As a result, none are to be trusted. The LA Times has an economics columnist who essentially campaigns for euro-socialism, which I wouldn't mind, except that he poses as a reporter giving us "facts," when what he is giving is is rather poorly informed opinion. The WSJ currently campaigns against the concept of global warming, apparently in the belief that global warming is a left-wing conspiracy and can be stopped by voting Republican.

A couple of days ago, as I was driving cross-counry, I was listening to the BBC on satellite radio, and a woman news reader informed us portentously that "71,000 African children were adopted by Americans" last year and that the trend was accelerating. You could tell by the tone of her voice that she thought this was a rather bad idea, but her words gave no hint of why. Further, there was not, in the entire report, any suggestion of what "71,000" meant. Is that a lot? Or is it not very many? You can't really tell without knowing how many children there are -- if there are 71 million, a figure I just pulled out of my butt, then one-in-a-thousand adoptions from a poor continent wouldn't seem excessive. In other words, there was nothing to give perspective; there was no professional-level reporting. It's like that old joke, "We have as partial score from the Iowa-Wisconsin basketball game: Wisconsin, 42."

The internet meme about "information should be free" never took into account what you got when you paid for information -- some level of professional reporting and judgment. But it's like the idea that bad money drives out good: cheap information drives out expensive information.

I don't know, but I suspect that this is a media phase on the way to something else, and that sometime in the future -- I may not live to see it -- we will be back to a paid model for some people. Most people will still get free (bad) information, but some people will choose to get better paid-for work. Guess which the 1% will choose.

Yes, we have to assume, based on events of the recent past, that Olympus' statements are the least trustworthy of all involved. Should we just automatically assume the company to be lying yet again? Inquiring minds want to know.